Colorado State University Ph.D. candidate Susan Yonemura, left, and Susan James, director of the School of Biomedical Engineering, work in the lab. The University of Colorado Denver recently unveiled its own bioengineering program.

When the University of Colorado Denver announced a brand new bioengineering department this month, it took only a couple of days for Colorado State University to point out that it already had such a program.

The two, about 65 miles apart, are a bit different — CU’s is an actual department; CSU offers a master’s and Ph.D. — but each costs between $230,000 and $350,000 a year to operate, with professors, support staff and labs.

It is this neck-and-neck competition — an unfettered arms race of degrees among public colleges and universities — that elected and higher-education leaders say could use an overhaul as college presidents brace for at least another $150 million in state budget cuts statewide over the next two years.

“If we have four or five business schools, that means we have four or five business deans,” said Dick Monfort, chairman of the board of trustees at the University of Northern Colorado and head of a state-appointed committee looking at higher education in Colorado. “Maybe not all the business classes are going to be at one university, I get that, but we’ve got to come up with ideas. My biggest frustration is that no one wants to change.”

In Colorado, 12 public colleges offer an English degree and seven offer a philosophy degree. Students can choose among nine public schools to earn a psychology degree or a sociology degree. Those interested in getting a master’s in journalism or communications can pick from six schools — all along the Front Range.

This fall, Metropolitan State College of Denver plans to launch two master’s programs — one in education, another in accounting — already offered on the same campus through UC Denver.

Seeking efficiency

The competition is an unplanned byproduct of years of cash starvation at Colorado’s public colleges. The state ranks 48th in per capita state and tuition support for public higher education.

One school sees success in, for example, another school’s criminal-justice program and decides to create the same major to lure in students.

“I think it’s foolish to aggressively compete,” said David Longanecker, president of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education and a former assistant education secretary. “An efficient system isn’t one that has a lot of duplications. . . . It doesn’t make sense. That’s not what public higher education is about. We should have clearly differentiated systems and missions.”

Or, as Colorado Department of Higher Education director Rico Munn put it: “We are entering an economic environment, and we’re also going to have to set priorities.”

From 2005 to 2008, the number of students enrolled in public colleges and universities in Colorado grew by about 4,000.

In that same time, many schools spawned dozens of new programs hoping to generate money — in the form of federal grants and out-of-state tuition — lost in cycles of state budget cuts.

Among the three CU campuses, officials have dumped only two programs in the past five years: a master’s in medical physics and a bachelor’s in dental hygiene. In that same time, CU has added 23 programs, with three more pending approval.

In matters of higher education, Colorado has become increasingly laissez-faire in the last six years.

In 2005, the higher-ed department stopped considering duplication when approving new degree programs after lawmakers decided the schools should be more autonomous and operate under “performance contracts.” Then, in 2008, the state stopped scrutinizing under-enrolled programs and duplicative degrees altogether, looking only at whether a college was meeting its “role and mission.”

“I think the (higher education) commission hasn’t stepped up and done its job,” said Tim Foster, president of Mesa State College in Grand Junction. Foster is pushing for “authority” status, which would free Mesa from some state rules involving data collecting and financial-aid allocations.

“The instinct is don’t tax me, tax the guy behind the tree, but we have to make these schools more efficient,” he said. “What are our guiding principles? Do we care about geographic access, financial access, serving Colorado kids? The commission needs to put the pressure on and keep things in front of our consciousness.”

Kathleen Bollard, academic-affairs officer of the CU system, said it would be nice if someone from above crafted a universal vision.

CU just added criminal-justice programs at Denver and Colorado Springs — even though Metro State already has a thriving program on the same Auraria campus. She said the decision came after CU saw a need for more graduates in the field.

“For the state as a whole, no one is looking, and that would be helpful,” she said.

California is often held up as one of the most organized public higher education systems in the country. The state crafted a “master plan” in 1960 that funneled in-state students to state universities and four-year colleges based on high school grades.

Because of the state’s population explosion, though, it is not uncommon to see duplicative degree programs within one city or a county among public universities.

Governing boards at the California State and University of California systems review program applications from individual campuses and scrutinize what makes a proposed degree program different from the other public offerings nearby, and why there is a need.

“We used to think about kids going to college and living on campus for four years, but now our population is older and a whole lot more mobile than that,” said Christine Mallon, a dean of academic programs at the California State system. “They’re placebound. Even if we have a program at one university, and another one proposes it, it may be just far enough way we have to take that into consideration.”

Geographic challenges

Business and community leaders serving on a battery of subcommittees appointed by Gov. Bill Ritter are supposed to look at how to more leanly and effectively operate the state’s public higher education system — challenged by geography and dramatically uneven population centers.

Take Adams State College in Alamosa. Though enrollment there has grown from 2,770 in 2005 to 3,369 now, last year the school had minuscule enrollments in a number of programs. Last spring, it had seven biology graduates and six math graduates.

The school also operates more expensively than most other state schools — receiving about $8,800 per student, compared with Metro State’s roughly $3,100 per student.

Schools are funded partially per student through the College Opportunity Fund, and then the state compensates for lower-enrolled schools through individual contracts. In short, smaller schools cost more to run because there is not a critical mass of students.

But people like Foster, who run schools outside the metro area, argue fiercely for keeping programs in hard-to-reach areas.

“If you’re living in Lamar, you’re not going to hustle up to Boulder to get an education; that may not be feasible for you,” Foster said. “These institutions mean a lot. They serve a demographic that may not have anywhere else to go.”

That was Colorado Mountain College’s argument at the state legislature. The system has seven community-college campuses, mostly in mountain towns, including Steamboat Springs and Rifle.

The college is pushing lawmakers to allow it to offer four-year bachelor’s degrees. The proposal handily passed the Senate Education Committee last week.

Colorado Mountain College spokeswoman Debra Crawford acknowledged that the new bachelor’s degree programs may not draw thousands and thousands of people. And yes, she said, it would cost more money to hire professors, but mountain dwellers need a place to get a four-year degree, she said.

The school has no cost estimate yet but is completing surveys now to see which bachelor’s programs would be welcomed by current students.

“We’re not trying to compete with other colleges and reduce their slice of the pie,” Crawford said. “We need to create a larger pie.”

This article has been corrected in this online archive. Originally, due to reporting error, the story inaccurately described enrollment in biology and math programs at Adams State
College. The school has 116 biology majors and 43 math majors. Last
spring, it had seven biology graduates and six math graduates.

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